


the stars have homes

by shortcircuitify



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Melancholy, Post-Canon, Strangers to Lovers, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-21 05:48:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19996870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shortcircuitify/pseuds/shortcircuitify
Summary: They meet in crowded bars and lonely villages, and they don’t like each other. Tolerate would be more appropriate, as they share bitter tales and drink cheap liquor together, the din of rowdy patrons masking the sorrow that lines their words.Yen and Eskel keep crossing paths, over and over and over again.





	the stars have homes

It seems only natural that they would stumble upon each other. They are both without purpose, now, with no Kaer Morhen for him to return to and the curse of the djinn no longer weighing her shoulders. Wandering and wanderer throughout the Northern Kingdoms, so vast in their splendor and yet so small when they seem to find each other so often. _The curse of Witchers and Sorceresses_ , Lambert would say.

They meet in crowded bars and lonely villages, and they don’t like each other. _Tolerate_ would be more appropriate, as they share bitter tales and drink cheap liquor together, the din of rowdy patrons masking the sorrow that lines their words. But they are both made up of jagged edges, and in the spaces between their burdens are familiar gaps they know they can fill up with each other for a time. It becomes a pattern for them, when the snow does not swallow them whole, escaping into the vast open skies.

They do not share secrets, like they would once upon a time with lovers that left them in the dust. It is necessary not to, when all they do is share sharp-edged words and pointed glances, rutting in back alleys or dingy tavern rooms for a moment of relief. Anything more and it would test the limits of the word _arrangement_.

A dangerous game to play, with her violet eyes and broken heart. She was trapped by a djinn, and now with the freedom she so long craved, she does not know what to do with herself. Finds her hands twisting and searching, rubbing against her empty womb, hearing the ghost of children laugh.

Sometimes, when they end up in the same small village at the same time, they do not even share a word between them. His hands grip the nape of her neck, hair wild around her face as he pushes her against the brick wall of the alley. He nips her lips, too much teeth, and she grips his shoulders, nails like talons burning against his skin. Her breath comes in hot gasps, and he holds her tightly until she bruises. Bites the juncture of her neck, the way he knows she likes.

Afterwards, in the early morning hours, when she is sleeping in a rented room and he is still awake, the bar in a quiet haze and mead staining his shirt, he thinks it would be nice to be at court. He would be crass and rude, out of his place, but it could be a nice life. He thinks of red hair and flirty smiles, flitty hands. He rubs his eyes, but the weariness holds.

They always part ways in the morning, when the sun is barely rising and they cannot see the bags of sleeplessness under the other’s eyes. A bitter taste stains their tongues when they finally part their separate ways. 

He trails the Road, finding monsters to kill and alcohol to drink, to keep his mind hazy at the best of times. He does not remember faces nor contracts, but knows he is doing something in the world, his hands calloused and worn rough.

Now, whenever he finds himself in small towns or roadside taverns, he searches for bright black hair and lilac eyes, before throwing himself to the winds.

She disappears, and hides, for once in her long life. She masks the smell of lilac and gooseberries with burnt incense wherever she travels, avoiding court and magick and everything that was once so dear to her. The woods become her home, and although she would never imagine it once upon a time, she finds comfort in the bark and grass under her feet, the smell of dirt filling the air.

She sleeps under the stars, floats like a nymph through the forest with the moon shrouding her form, pretending to be a creature sought after by men, their lives gambled just to see the sight of her.

And in the dark of night she feels the cold seeping into her bones, muscles aching from the loneliness that enshrouds her, with her silver haired lover gone and her daughter grown.

She does not always stay in green and vibrant forests. She goes to towns, hides her face, sits in bars for months, waiting for the gleam of a silver sword and a voice worn rough, waiting and waiting and waiting.

The two of them hold fast, and the years drag on, and that same bitter taste becomes familiar, an ode that they are still breathing, if not truly living. They travel, foreign roads slowly becoming familiar, retraced over and over again until the Northern Kingdoms are just another regret left behind in their trail. They both avoid the far north, where Kovir and slowly fading memories lie, and they always find each other again, in a dirty bar or an open road where all of their scars are on display.

Yennefer thinks of leaving, often. Of going south again, finding warm beds and different men that will forget her face by the morning. Or maybe going farther north, to hug mountains untouched by men, where she could find peace in her tumultuous heart. There is nothing tying her here any longer – Ciri is grown, and the young Empress’s days are filled with stale duties and fake smiles, her nights filled with different bars and alcohols and lovers, until the sun rises again and she is bound to her throne. A mold Yennefer no longer fits, or never did.

“Then, why don’t you?” He asks, sipping at ale or mead or whiskey. It doesn’t matter anymore, with the sun slowly setting before them, a small Skellige shanty at their backs. She has been here for years, waiting for him to turn up.

She doesn’t answer and he looks at her, at the way her hair frames her face. The way the shadows throw her in sharp relief.

The stars are slowly climbing in the sky, and she watches them intently, their twinkling a way of mocking her; they, in their homes above, constant and permanent versus she and him far below, trailing around the sun and stars. She envies them, she thinks, those ever-living stars with homes.

And as she lays back against the cool grass, dampness seeping into her clothes, she looks at those stars, and for once feels the prick of tears at the corners of her eyes. Eskel stares at her, waiting, impatient in his answer, and so she simply, slowly, entwines her hand with his.

He doesn’t move away, and looks up at the sky with her.


End file.
